Slimming for slackers

IN A nondescript building on the medical campus of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, among the parking lots blazing in the summer sun, lives a group of remarkable mice. Housed in miniature plastic bubbles, the mice lead a sterile existence separated from dirt and microbes by a double airlock that ensures that their food and water arrives untainted by bacteria. These mice are germ free. The trillions of microbes that would normally live inside their guts are entirely absent. But this is no experiment in ultra-cleanliness. These mice may hold the key to tackling the global obesity epidemic.

Worldwide, more than a billion people are overweight; of these, 300 million are obese. In the US, 65 per cent of adults are either overweight or obese. And the numbers, like our waistlines, just keep on growing. It seems that most of us are either unwilling or unable to make the ...

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